Well, it looks like you guys like your Fieldturf. After Saturday, we can all see why.

This week, it’s simple. Army-Navy is being moved to the second weekend of December. What say you?

Ricky Dobbs stepped up in relief of an injured Jarod Bryant and ran for 224 (!) yards on 42 (!) carries on Saturday as Navy topped SMU, 34-7. Jarod Bryant ran for 50 yards before leaving the game with a shoulder injury. SMU was held to 157 passing yards and -13 yards on the ground.

Conventional wisdom says that Navy doesn’t get the country’s most coveted recruits. But on Saturday, one 5-star recruit– THE HAND OF ALMIGHTY GOD– played his finest game of the season. The weather was Navy’s best weapon on defense, especially the wind. SMU’s biggest threat– the deep ball– was made virtually impossible to execute thanks to 30-35 mph gusts that kept the flags at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium taut and TV cameras shaking. To give you an idea of how big of an effect this had on SMU’s offense, think of Navy’s struggles earlier in the season. When Kaipo went out, Jarod Bryant struggled running the triple option. Without the ability to capitalize on all three options, Navy’s offense wasn’t effective. The same is true in the run & shoot. A receiver runs deep on almost every play, but if the quarterback’s key told him to throw deep, he wasn’t able to take advantage. That meant a lot of short-yardage, pre-determined routes; plays that aren’t the real run & shoot and take SMU’s offense out of its element.

Deep passes weren’t the only thing affected by the wind, either; Bo Levi Mitchell’s shorter throws were also getting knocked down. SMU’s punts were even worse. The Mustangs won the coin toss and decided to take the ball to start the game; they probably should have chosen to defer. Navy made them drive into the wind, and after the Mustangs couldn’t get those drives going, their punts went nowhere and gave Navy fantastic field position for its first three drives. Navy took a 20-0 lead in the first quarter on touchdown drives that had an average starting position of the SMU 39 yard line. The game was over by the second quarter.

While the wind was Navy’s MVP, it was still a team effort. It isn’t as if teams haven’t been able to nickel and dime themselves down the field against the Mids in the past. Buddy Green decided to rely on a 3-man rush for most of the game, dropping 8 into coverage. This hasn’t worked too well for Navy in the past, as opposing quarterbacks had all day to find an open receiver. That wasn’t the case on Saturday. Nate Frazier, Jabaree Tuani, and Matt Nechak controlled the line of scrimmage. They didn’t get immediate pressure on Mitchell, but they closed the pocket quickly enough that the freshman quarterback wasn’t able to camp out and wait for someone to get open. To me the most impressive part of the line’s performance was their ability to make plays all over the field. Nechak had the hit of the game, running outside to plant the wide receiver on a screen play. Nate Frazier got his sack by chasing down Mitchell from behind. Tuani might have had the most impressive play, coming in on a pass rush, then turning around and making a tackle on the wide receiver downfield and stopping him on third down. It was a good performance from a group that needed to rebound after the Pitt game.

But let’s be real here; the weather might have been the biggest factor in the game, but the biggest story is Navy’s ongoing quarterback soap opera. Poor Jarod Bryant just can’t catch a break. After struggling over the first half of the season, he seemingly put it together against Pitt, only to see the team around him get manhandled. This week he picked up right where he left off and moved the ball fairly easily against a bad SMU defense. But apparently Jarod had reached his good vibes quota for the week, and a couple of awkward falls onto his shoulder led to him being knocked out of the game. (WHY CAN’T I ENJOY A BLOWOUT FOR ONCE???) In stepped Ricky Dobbs, who runs like Brian Hampton and apparently prefers not to pitch the ball, like Brian Madden. Dobbs ran like a tank, bulldozing his way to 224 yards and 4 touchdowns. But it’s hard to really get a feel for how well he did because SMU’s defense was really, really bad.

To get an idea of how bad, let’s look at Ricky’s longest run of the day, a 38-yard stampede in the second quarter. SMU had brought a safety up to the line of scrimmage who would end up covering the playside slotback and getting run out of the play. Ricky’s pitch key was the linebacker lined up over the B-gap. He showed a pitch read, but the cornerback had blitzed to cover the pitch man:

This play should have been blown up by the defense. Against Pitt, it would have been. But Ricky just sidestepped the linebacker and ran upfield. You could say it was a good move on Ricky’s part, and it was. Ricky also deserves credit for seeing the blitz and not pitching the ball. But better linebackers aren’t going to miss those tackles the way SMU’s were.

One dimension that Ricky brought to the game was that he was essentially a second fullback. Ricky’s hard running inside made things easier on the offensive line. A lot of times you’ll hear about the importance of “establishing the fullback” from media and coaches alike. Being an astute fan, you might find that odd since in a triple option, you take what the defense gives you. But even when it looks like the option is working well outside, you still see the coaches call a couple of designed handoffs to the B-back. The reason is because it makes linebackers easier to block. Last week against Pitt, we saw how the middle linebacker ignored the dive and ran to the quarterback on the triple option. The Mids just couldn’t get enough of a push inside to force Pitt’s defense to respect the dive play. This week, Eric Kettani became a lead blocker for Ricky Dobbs, who attacked the middle of the field. The success they were having meant that the linebackers had to respect that play, and it kept them from running outside on the snap. That hesitation made it easier for the tackle to make the block:

There’s another play that might not have worked the way Pitt was playing, but was a nice little 5-yard gain against SMU. The linebacker went to meet the fullback, but wound up getting blocked by the tackle.

One thing you’ll notice is that both of those plays are triple option plays. That’s a good sign.

At this point we could have three healthy quarterbacks for Temple, or we could be starting our third string. If Ricky has to start, it’s good to have seen him run some of the offense. And we didn’t even use his biggest strength– his arm. Now we wait.

I’d like to enjoy
a win without worrying
about injuries.

Where to begin, where to begin.

I suppose the easiest place to start is with the obvious. A NMCMS-record crowd– something we’ve seen a lot of lately– watched Pitt pound Navy into the ground, 42-21. The Big East-leading Panthers rushed for 244 yards, including 156 yards and 3 TDs from LeSean McCoy. Jarod Bryant led Navy with 81 yards and a touchdown, while Shun White had a 40-yard TD run of his own. The loss ended Navy’s 3-game win streak and dropped the Mids’ record to 4-3. It’s hard to point out anything the Mids did well. The offense sputtered, the defense played like matadors to LeSean McCoy’s bull, and the kickoff coverage gave Pitt good field position to work with. It was a long afternoon.

The game was a tall, frosty mug of reality for the defense. Don’t get me wrong; they are better than last year. But after three straight wins, it seems that collective opinion may have exaggerated the extent of their improvement. The Wake Forest game was undoubtedly a dominating performance, but there were deficiencies in the Rutgers and Air Force games that maybe we glossed over a bit. Rutgers really had no trouble at all running the ball on the Mids. Their problem was that they still hadn’t found their identity as an offense and weren’t dedicated to running the ball. The Scarlet Knights averaged 6.2 yards per carry, but still turned to an inconsistent passing game in key situations. Pittsburgh had no such identity crisis. First down? They ran. Third down? They ran. Two minute drill? They ran. And Navy couldn’t stop it. LeSean McCoy was excellent, but it wasn’t just him. Fullback Conredge Collins ran for 50 yards on only 9 carries, while LaRod Stephens-Howling averaged 4.2 yards per carry and punched in two touchdowns. McCoy may be the lasting image of the result of Navy’s futility, and he certainly caused a spike in this week’s missed tackle count; but it didn’t really matter who Pitt gave the ball to. This game was won for them at the line of scrimmage.

And that’s true on both sides of the ball. The biggest shame in all of this– other than losing the game– is that Jarod Bryant actually had a decent game relative to his past performances, but I doubt too many people will recognize it. Coach Niumat said that he couldn’t afford to shrink the playbook against Pitt, and he didn’t. Jarod responded, running the triple option capably and getting the ball to the right people. Unfortunately, when the blocking breaks down it doesn’t really matter who you give the ball to.

Some of you may remember back to the week after the Duke game when Bill Wagner posted on his blog about an observation I made about the Blue Devils’ defense. When you run the triple against the defensive alignment that Duke used, the playside tackle’s responsibility is to pass inside the defensive end and block the middle linebacker. But instead of using the defensive end to pursue the ball, Duke’s coaches used him to actually “block” the playside tackle and keep him from getting to the second level of the defense. This did two things; one, it freed up the middle linebacker to flow to the ball. Two, by turning inside, the DE gave the quarterback a “keep” read. Jarod would keep the ball, then get swallowed by the unblocked LB.

Pitt’s defense took the same approach:

You can see how Scott McKillop is lined up a little deeper than usual. That, combined with interference from the DE, kept Navy’s tackles from getting to him. He was able to move to the ball all afternoon and led the team in tackles.

Now, it isn’t as if there is no answer to this. There are a few things the offense can do to take advantage. One is the counter option, which we know can be set up nicely by defensive ends that cheat inside on the snap. The counter option was Navy’s most successful play for the most part, and was the play that they used to score their second touchdown. But unlike some others in this offense, it isn’t one of those “run it ’til the defense stops it” kind of plays. Since the quarterback starts the play with his back to his read, there’s a chance that he’ll get crushed if the pitch key blitzes. That’s what happened to Kaipo in last year’s Wake Forest game. If the defense is expecting the counter option, they’re more likely to blitz. That’s particularly bad when you’re already on quarterback number two. The midline option can also be effective when the middle linebacker is quick to move outside, but when Coach Jasper tried to run it, the line just couldn’t create enough space in which to run.

Coach Jasper didn’t give up, though. He tried yet another adjustment in the second half, using the unbalanced line. This time, he tried running the triple option to the heavy side of the formation, using the extra tackle to try to block McKillop. But more often than not, Pitt’s best defensive player was just too agile:

The coaches had answers. Unfortunately, the Mids just couldn’t execute them.

One other thing that Pitt did a little better than most other teams was anticipate the snap count. There was more than one play where you would see the slotback go into tail motion, with a defensive lineman using that to time his jump:

When you’re watching these plays in real time, you might get the impression that Jarod missed reads. Only after going back and watching the game a couple times do you get a feel for what really happened. Kaipo wouldn’t have fixed this, and neither would putting in Ricky Dobbs. I’m sure that the team will block better in weeks to come, and depending on who plays in the Eaglebank Bowl, we probably won’t see a defense as good as Pitt’s for the rest of the year. Strangely, after seeing this game I actually feel a little better about the offense if Jarod has to play. Hopefully this game doesn’t shoot his confidence.

There’s no doubt that this game was a stinker, and the coaches should lose their voices yelling in practice today. But it’s important to keep a little perspective. Navy is 4-3 after playing 4 BCS teams, a top-25 MAC team, and Air Force. The team has come out of that stretch in position to win the CIC Trophy and become bowl eligible. They’re still on track to meet the standards set over the last five years.

Some other bits:

— I have now heard more than once about “grumbling” from TV analysts calling the game. As in, “after Navy’s 1-2 start, there was some grumbling about whether Ken Niumatalolo was the right man for the job.” Can these guys shut up about this already? Who, exactly, was “grumbling?” A few select message board jackasses? Because I don’t think anyone else was. I certainly hope that there is a slightly higher standard for what’s worthy of on-air discussion than the ramblings of message board idiots who are ready to jump off a cliff after three games. I can only imagine what other nuggets of wisdom might come to light if they talk about what they read on message boards.

— Here’s Navy’s first touchdown of the game. I show this for two reasons: one, to demonstrate Jarod Bryant running a splendidly executed triple option play; and two, to point out a really, really annoying habit of Shun White’s:

On his long touchdown runs– which we’ve been fortunate enough to see quite a few this season– Shun seems to like to drop the ball on the ground as soon as he can. Shun cut it pretty close on a couple plays earlier in the year, but against Pitt, he got very, very lucky:

The ball is out of his hand. Whether it broke the plane of the goal line before he dropped it is extremely questionable. I don’t know if that’s what the cool kids are doing nowadays, but he needs to cut it out. God help him if the team loses to Notre Dame because of something like this. Get on him, Coach DuPaix!

— I noticed a few players wearing a new helmet style this week. I’m not sure if it’s related to all the concussions we’ve seen this year or if it’s just some new equipment that came in.

You aren’t going to
win many games with such a
horrible defense.